Tuesday, September 19, 2006

The war to colonise hearts and minds

The stories of honour killings, forced marriages, child brides, and gang rapes are regularly invoked to stir up the public opinion against Muslims to portray their societies as draconian. It is a familiar theme in the West to use women’s plight as an excuse to dehumanise the Muslims and to accuse them of crimes, which they do not condone.

The Western media is obsessed with these stories but, when it comes to its own backyard then it ignores similar problems. However, it never ignores a story if it portrays a negative image of a non-White person specially a Muslim. This is not a new trend. The discrimination against minorities has a very long history in the West. The Holocaust is a prime example. The war to colonise hearts and minds of the Muslims has been underway for a long-time.

The Western media is trying to escalate this war. It became hyperbolic while accusing a Pakistani Muslim for abducting his 12 years old daughter - Molly Campbell in Britain. Child custody disputes are common in the West because of high divorce rates. But, it involved a Pakistani Muslim that was the reason for its high-profile coverage. The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported that Molly “could be forced to become a child bride ... [and her father was] planning to marry her to a 25-year-old man”.

Later, Molly Campbell told that she was not abducted. Molly also asked to be called by her Islamic name Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana. Osama Saeed, Scottish spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Britain said, “this was not a straightforward case of kidnap as was being portrayed” by the media. The Western media did not bother to present a true picture and stacked arguments against Misbah’s father without investigating her story. Independent reports denied claims made in the Western media.

The gang rape of Mukhtar Mai was also used by the Western media to portray a negative image of Pakistan. However, it kept silent in case of a 14 year old girl who was gang-raped and murdered by American soldiers in Iraq. The soldiers also killed her father, mother, and young sister in her family home in in Mahmudiya.

The obvious silence of the Western media in case of the young Iraqi girl shows that it does not care about human rights if the victim is a Muslim. On the other hand, a rape victim gets a celebrity status if the perpetrator of the crime is a Muslim. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to work out reasons behind the dualism of the Western media. It is a case of pure hypocrisy.

However, the Western media tries to under-report rapes and murders in the West. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network in the USA, “Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted. One in six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape ... In 2003-2004, there were an average annual 204,370 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.”

In the USA more than 40 percent of female murders are committed by their family members. The Western media does not want to know what are the reasons behind the murders of thousands of women every year. It raises the issue of the honour killing only when a Muslim is involved in a murder. It tries to imply that there are no cases of honour killings involving the Western men. It is also guilty of condoning these murders by not using a strong language against the Western men who are killing thousands of innocent women.

The Western media also uses anti-Muslim voices such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali to defame the Muslims. According to Ali, her father arranged a marriage for her but she refused to marry. Later, she escaped to the Netherlands and became an icon of the anti-Muslim mob. She renounced Islam and became a member of Dutch parliament after fiercely criticising the Muslims. She horrified the Muslims all around the world by producing a film in which verses of the Quran were desecrated. Later, the director of her film, Theo Van Gogh was assassinated by a Muslim.

Ali fabricated her story and lied about her circumstances to migrate to the Netherlands. She was forced to resign from the Dutch parliament because the Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk said that her passport should be revoked. But, Verdonk made a U-turn and did not revoke her passport. The American Enterprise Institute – a conservative think-tank, came to rescue her and awarded her a lucrative job because she was an anti-Muslim. Time Magazine also declared her as one of the 100 people “with the clout and power to change our world” in 2005.

The Muslims should try to improve conditions of women. However, they should be aware of inner motives of the West. It wants to impose its culture on the Eastern people regardless of their religion before its economic demise. However, true liberals are united to expose this war.

The war to colonise the hearts and minds of the Muslims is a part of a wider strategy to strengthen the Western hegemony in Asia. There is a continuous spate of propaganda against China’s political, economic, and cultural affairs as a part of this strategy. Occasionally, India is also targeted. The Western media fails to understand that the Asian continent has multicultural and multi-religious civilizations renowned for their rich and diverse culture. The war against Asia is doomed to fail. Hearts and minds of the Eastern people will never be colonised.

1- The Holocaust2- Vietnam3- Iraq4- Afghanistan5- Native American Genocide6- Australian - Aboriginals Genocide7- Japan - use of atomic bombs against civilians8- Russia9- World War I10- World War II11- World War III - The West is getting ready for the World War III but it is too late. Asia is too strong think of China, India, and Pakistan.

Really sir, the problem with human nature is to blame that which we dont know. I live in the states, and continually find that which is wrong with this society... not that mine doesnt have ills of its own. It is individuals that commit the atrocities, both in the West and the rest of the world. Both Christianity and Islam are religions of peace, however, there are individuals and/or groups of people that have commited atrocities on, both camps, in the name of religion.

it is quite inconsistent to blame the states for not reporting on cases of rape, and then to cite their own statistics. rhetorically unsound, you see. and the fact that the phrase "honor killing" even exists with regard to the murder of muslim women speaks volumes. in the states such actions are called "homicides," and thankfully there is no implication of "honor" attached.

Might I suggest that the reason the case of Ms Mai caused such interest in the Western media was the unusual circumstance that her gang rape was issued as a punishment by a tribal council (not for anything she had done, as it happened, but for an affair her brother was alleged to have had). Thus it seemed to be condoned, in fact ordered, by the authorities, albeit only local ones. Whereas the American soldiers in Iraq are being tried, and, I believe, face the death penalty if convicted. And by the way, our media has reported the allegations, and no doubt will report them more if they are convicted:

Who is killing innocent civilians in Kashmir? Who is acting as a terrorist since 1947? Who is trying to sabotage United Nations' resolutions to organize free and impartial plebiscite to decide future of Kashmir?

Who is involved in crimes against humanity, extra judicial executions, deaths in custody and disappearances of innocent Kashmiris?

Thousands of Kashmiri have been killed by Indian army science 1947.

According to Amnesty International’s Report 2006 “In July, four juveniles aged between 11 and 15 were shot dead by [INDIAN] paramilitary Rashtriya Rifles in Kupwara district. Local people said that the boys had participated in a marriage party and gone for a stroll but ran away when ordered to stop. They said that the army had been informed of possible movements of people attending the party late at night.”

“The Indian troops-to-Kashmiri people ratio in the occupied Kashmir is the largest ever soldiers-to-civilians ratio in the world.” according to Pakistan.

United Nations passed a resolution demanding that the question of the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan will be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite.

India is consistently denying to organize a plebiscite according to United Nations’ resolution.

Your statement that the Western media has ignored the case of the five American soldiers raping a girl and murdering her family is simply not true. It has been reported heavily.

What gets media attention is tragedy and obscene crimes, whether they be western or asian. I do agree however that some Asian countries are portrayed in a negative light by some sections of the press. they are feeding a stereotype and that is wrong, however it is to make money and sell papers, not colonise minds. Taking it to that extreme is paranoid i'm afraid.

as a British born and bred female of European stock - and therefore I would hope to be objective - I do think that it is highly hypocritical that any person that might have a remotely Muslim background who happens to commit a crime is held up and accused of the crime in the name of Islam.

If the local teenage thugs stamp a tramp to death - it's not like we all get up in arms and decry their christian upbringing.

I personally find this whole 'field day' against Islam in the media today highly abhorrent - and find it incomprehensible that any intelligent human can't see that it's all part of a tactic to whip up racial hatred by the powers that be, in a cynical preparation for invasion of Iran.